Jyotsna Singh

Professor
Early Modern Literature and Culture
Race, Empire, and Global Connections, Gender and Sexuality
.

Office: C708 Wells Hall
Email: jsingh@msu.edu

Jyotsna G. Singh teaches and researches early modern literature and culture, including Shakespeare, travel writing, postcolonial theory, early modern histories of Islam, and gender and race studies, often exploring the intersections of these different fields and periods.

Her published work includes: The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics (Blackwell), (co-authored); Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: ‘Discovery’ of India in the Language of Colonialism (Routledge); and Travel Knowledge: European ‘Discoveries’ in the Early Modern Period (Palgrave), (co-ed. Ivo Kamps), and A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1559–1660. Ed. (Blackwell); The Postcolonial World (co-ed, David D. Kim), Routledge; and most recently, Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory (Arden 2019).

Her latest book, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500-1700 Second Edition. (Wiley Blackwell, 2021). This issue includes a collection of original essays that provide an expansive picture of globalization across the early modern world.

Pictured: A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500-1700 Second Edition. (Wiley Blackwell, 2021)

Currently, she is working on two projects: i) A monograph that draws on postcolonial theory, global exchange, and early modern history of Islam and Christianity. Tentatively entitled, Muslim and Christian Identity-formations in the Early Modern World, this monograph looks afresh at the shifting applications of the term ‘religion’ in Europe, via a conglomeration of Muslim cultural memories and European imaginings of the Muslim ‘other.’

ii) A series of essays on a reassessment of early English Slave voyages, expanding on a forthcoming chapter, “Hakluyt’s books and Hakwins Slaving Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the English Imaginary, 1562-1600.”

Jyotsna Singh has received several research fellowships: at the Folger Shakespeare Library; a Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellowship at Queen Mary, University of London (2008); and a Long-Term Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, (2010).

Most recently, she received a visiting Fellowship at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, UK (Michaelmas (Fall term 2019). She was also invited to design and lead three Research Workshops at the Newberry Library (Renaissance Center): Anglo-Muslim Encounters (2011), and Reading the Early Modern Anglo-Muslim Archive (2012); and Early Anglo-Muslim Encounters, (March 2020).

Pictured: Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory (Arden 2019)

She was also an Invited speaker at Georgetown University, NEH Summer Teaching Institute for Teachers: “Connected History of the Renaissance,’ Aug, 3-6, 2020. https://www.newberry.org/03062020-early-modern-anglo-muslim-encounters.

She has been invited as a plenary or Keynote speaker at conferences and invited talks world-wide, ranging from Greece, Portugal, Delhi, U.K., Germany, and Paris.

Among her long-term research projects is a book/data base on “Iraqi Kurdistan,” on which she has published two blog essays, based on her travels and research to the region through an MSU exchange program (via an IREX grant- http://www.irex.org/).

Blogs http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/potpurri/a_musafir_in_iraqi_kurdistan.html Part Ihttp://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/potpurri/a_musafir_in_iraqi_kurdistan_part_ii.html

COURSES TAUGHT:

Undergraduate:

ENG 280: Foundations of Literary Study II (Theory)
ENG 368: Medieval and Early Modern Literature
ENG210: Introduction to the Study of English
ENG310A: Literature in English to 1660
ENG426B: Comparative Drama: Renaissance and Baroque
ENG455: Renaissance Literature and Drama
ENG492H: Studies in Period and Genre
ENG 318: Studies in Shakespeare
ENG 484: Capstone
ENG320B: Literary History: “Postcolonial Studies”

Graduate:

ENG 813 Gender, Power, and Violence in Jacobean Tragedy (2020)ENG 813 Shakespeare, Race, and Empire (2018)ENG 813 Early Modern Islam and the West (2016)
ENG855/955: Shakespeare
AL892: Seminar in Arts and Letters